


show me the feeling

by neville



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Bakery and Coffee Shop, Coffee Shops, Crush at First Sight, Crushes, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, Pride, Pride Parades, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, finn is an art student, finn: (sees poe) oh im gay, poe runs a coffee shop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22144702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neville/pseuds/neville
Summary: “Have you got strong coffee?” Finn asks.“It’s Guatemalan,” the barista says as if this answers Finn’s question perfectly.⋆ ⋆ ⋆Poe runs a coffee shop, and Finn is in desperate need of caffeination.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 13
Kudos: 225





	show me the feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [harleyhearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/harleyhearts/gifts).



> so this is my late christmas present for my friend river !!! happy holidays babe <3 thank u for always being here to yell about finnpoe with me

> I hope to find   
>  Who I believe in   
>  [...]   
>  I can’t deny myself   
>  Show me the feeling   
>  –Michael Kiwanuka,  _ You Ain’t the Problem _

Pros of being an illustration student: Finn just gets to draw all day; the art school buildings are undoubtedly the coolest part of the entire campus; he gets a discount on markers. Cons of being an illustration student: Finn  _ never stops drawing _ , because he always has hellish amounts of portfolio to fill, which means he also needs to constantly be hooked up to an IV line of caffeine, and unluckily for him, the Starbucks on campus has just closed for refurbishment. He is hungry, tired, and well and truly fucked. His desperation for coffee is at an all-time high. 

And lucky for Finn, the independent coffee shop on the corner which he’s never seen open in his two years here is  _ finally  _ open. He’s never been more grateful in his life as he stumbles through the door, art file tucked under his arm. The coffee shop is nice, too, decorated with lots of plants and with a vaguely jungle-esque theme. Not tacky, though. There’s one person sitting at the back of the shop, a girl scribbling frenetically away at a notebook as she reads from a laptop, and one barista behind the counter. 

The barista doesn’t seem to have noticed Finn coming in, because he has the music turned up loud and he’s in the middle of swaying to it, eyes shut and head tilted back. Finn has to wait until the song ends before the barista comes back to the room, and he apologises and grins. 

“Hey, sorry,” he says. “What can I get you?”

“Have you got strong coffee?” Finn asks. 

“It’s Guatemalan,” the barista says as if this answers Finn’s question perfectly. Finn decides not to further inquire, so he passes over his KeepCup (which he painted lots of little faces and abstract shapes on when he was bored one afternoon) and asks for a black coffee. “You get a coffee if you give me a song,” the barista says. “Oh, I love this cup. That’s cute. You an artist?”

“What do you mean, give you a song?” 

“Give me a song to play,” the barista says, “while I make your drink. I need new songs.” 

“Oh,” says Finn, as every song he’s ever known flushes out of his head. Come on, he thinks, he  _ just _ needs to remember the name of a song, any song, just nothing embarrassing – “uh,  _ I Like That _ by Janelle Monáe?”

“ _ That’s _ a good song,” says the barista, looking impressed as he starts it playing. “Hey, are you an art student?” 

Finn realises that the barista must’ve spotted his file, and he nods. “Uh, yeah. I study Illustration pretty much next door.” Usually, he wouldn’t like small talk – god, what’s he supposed to  _ say _ ? – but this barista is so cute that he can feel all the words just bubbling out of him. “Kinda requires a large supply of coffee.”

“I get that,” says the barista. “I could never focus in school until my third cup. What’s your name, by the way?”

“Finn.”

“I’m Poe. Used to run this place in one of the old police boxes on the other end of campus, and then, would you believe it, this place came up for sale and I managed to scrape enough money together to move.”

“This is a nice place,” says Finn, looking around as Poe starts up the coffee machine. 

“I like that it doesn’t rain in here,” Poe says. “And we have heating so I don’t have to wear four layers in the winter. You can’t really move your arms by the third jumper, which wasn’t great for making coffee.” 

“Oh my God. Did you not get a heater?”

“No,” sighs Poe. “Gotta be nifty with your money if you ever hope to move out of a police box. This is a good song, by the way; it’s going on The Playlist. You’ve gotta come back and give me more tunes.” 

Finn feels as if he can’t imagine going to Starbucks again, even though he’s barely been here two minutes. Poe is warm, and friendly, and has a radiant laugh; he deserves to have a shop to himself, and when he passes over the coffee, it smells  _ amazing _ . “Hey, have a stamp card. Eight coffees and you get one free.” Finn takes it: it’s a bright orange stamp card with stamps in the shape of little space ships, and Poe has given him one stamp. “I know I’m not Starbucks, but the coffee’s better.”

“I’ll be back,” Finn promises. “I’ve got a deadline coming up. When do you guys close?”

“When I feel like it,” Poe says. “Rose has got a deadline, too, so I’ll be open til then. She’s got… a report or something, I don’t know, it’s engineering.” He gestures to the girl at the back, so intensely focused on her work that she doesn’t seem to realise she’s being referred to. “Good luck with the drawing.” 

“Thanks,” Finn says, putting his stamp card in his jeans pocket and taking his coffee, waving a little bashfully on the way out. It’s good, he realises when he takes a sip on his way into his lecture theatre. Really good. Guatemalan, he thinks; nice. 

When he gets back to drawing for his portfolio, he realises as he’s in the middle of sketching a face that he’s drawing Poe – or at least Poe as he remembers him from this morning, charming and handsome. He pauses, and then turns the paper over, spending just over two hours converting their morning encounter into comic form. His lecturers are always encouraging him to  _ broaden his horizons _ and try something new, so he hopes they’ll like it. His friend Rey, who studies history, arrives as he’s mid-colouring and looks down at the comic. 

“Who’s that?” she asks. 

“He runs that coffee shop,” Finn says. “That one on the corner.”

“It was open?” she says, slinging off her bag and taking out one of her hefty textbooks. Finn is mildly glad that his passion is for art, because he’s not sure he could survive an academic degree. Not that illustration  _ isn’t _ , but he’s not having to read these huge tomes of books, so he counts his blessings. He just has to experiment with materials and styles sometimes. 

“Yeah,” says Finn. “I think he just opens and closes when he wants to.” 

“That’s not a great way to run a business,” she says. Finn makes a non-committal sound. He doesn’t want to insult Poe. There’s something  _ about  _ him. 

⋆

Finn realises that Poe didn’t actually expect him to come back, because his eyes light up when he sees Finn. It’s four o’ clock, and Poe is having a cigarette by the window of the shop; he takes one last long drag, then flicks the stub away. “Hey,” he grins. “How was your day?” 

Finn feels as if he’s just come home. 

He starts telling Poe everything about his lectures and his lecturers and about seeing Rey and how he was trying out comics as a format, and Poe listens and nods and makes comments and asks questions when relevant as he puts his apron back on. Finn realises after a moment that the music over the speakers is still Janelle Monáe, and goes red. 

“Can I get you something to eat?” Poe says. “On the house.”

“For real?” Finn asks, feeling as if he’s somehow obtrusive. Poe nods. 

“Yeah, for real. You came back,” he says, and the smile on his face gives Finn the impression that this is something that means a lot and is rooted deep within Poe. Maybe he doesn’t get a lot of repeat customers. Maybe he doesn’t get a lot of  _ customers _ . “Whatever you want. You can have a panini or a cake, anything.” 

“Okay,” Finn says. “I’ll have a chocolate orange brownie and another black coffee – wait, actually, can I have a cappuccino?” 

“’course you can,” Poe says, and gives Finn another stamp for his troubles. “I’ll stay open until you’re done working. Let me know if you need anything else.” 

Finn gets more work done than he expected, especially considering that Rose has actually fallen asleep in the back and Poe rouses her eventually to tell her softly that she’s been asleep for an hour. He gets her an espresso for nothing to wake her back up as she starts working again, and just before eight, Finn thinks it’s about time to head on home and make some dinner, so he packs up his things and finds Poe smoking outside again. 

“I’m gonna go,” he says. “That cupcake was really good.”

“My friend Snap does the baking,” says Poe. “He’s great at it. Come back soon, alright, Finn? Fill up that stamp card.”

Finn says that yeah, he will, he’ll be back. 

⋆

He comes back every day, always having to give Poe a new song (Poe’s favourites from Finn’s recommendations are  _ Riot!  _ by Earl Sweatshirt and  _ 27  _ by Young Fathers), and even when Starbucks reopens, he finds himself still going to Poe’s instead. He makes friends with Rose, who’s really sweet when she’s not busy working, and with Poe’s other regulars: Connix, a maths student; Beaumont, who never actually says what he’s studying; and D’Acy, a physics lecturer. There’s something about the sense of community and family and studying together all night while Poe makes the coffee. 

Finn misses him when Poe doesn’t open the shop. 

He talks to Poe a lot when Poe is on a cigarette break, because that’s when Poe is the most honest. He finds out that Poe dropped out of the University of Tatooine and was at a loss for things to do for a long time until he got the job here; that Poe also used to play guitar in a ska band (when they get back into the shop that day, he plays The Specials and sings along all afternoon); and that Poe’s parents died when he was young, meaning he was mostly brought up by his grandfather and later found refuge in the landlords of this building, Han and Leia. Finn listens to all of these stories, and draws some of the lighter ones as comics: Poe playing guitar, Poe in his old police box unable to move for all his big sweaters, Poe opening this shop. 

With Poe, Finn passes the spring. 

Rey says to Finn one day as they’re revising together in the library that she thinks Finn’s crush on Poe might be the biggest crush ever to have existed. Finn denies it for hours until they go for a quick snack at the library café, and, sitting at the table, he puts his head in his hands and says, “you have no idea how much I want him to kiss me.” 

That evening, Finn is walking home shivering in the rain when he sees Poe coming out of the grocery store, bags in hands: he looks at Finn, and shakes his head, and tells Finn to take his jacket because he must be cold. When Finn comes into the shop the next day to give it back, Poe looks him up and down and says, “keep it. It suits you.”

“You have  _ got _ to tell him,” Rey says. Finn groans. 

“I don’t know how,” he says. “It’s gonna sound creepy.” 

“You  _ do _ look really good in that jacket. He’s right. He gets it. Finn, just tell him you like him, and the worst thing that could happen is that he’ll be flattered but say no. Which seems unlikely. He gave you his  _ whole jacket _ .” 

It  _ is _ the best jacket Finn has ever owned, and he’s only owned it for a day. He sighs. “Why can’t we just – already be dating? All this asking out stuff is bull.” 

“You kinda already are,” Rey says. 

“We are not,” says Finn. 

One of the library staff, a taut young man with bright ginger hair who looks hilariously wrong in the purple library helper T-shirt (he definitely doesn’t look  _ happy to help _ , that’s for sure), shushes them both on his way past. Finn stops him to ask if he knows where the books on comics are; his lecturers have been supportive in his move to the format, so now he’s writing his essay on it. The man’s lip curls as if comics shouldn’t even be a part of the library stock, but he nods and says “take the West Stair to the fourth floor and they’re right in front of you”. 

Finn checks the books out and heads over to the café to see if it’s open for some evening revision; there aren’t any customers, but Poe is in, and Finn is about to head inside when he realises that Poe is actually dancing to the music over the speakers as if no-one can look. Finn recognises it from first-year clubbing as  _ When You Were Young _ , and Poe is singing along like it’s his song and no-one else’s, bouncing on the soles of his feet and belting out line after line. Finn steps aside and lets him have his moment, flushing at the unrestrained passion with which Poe dances; his forehead is pricked slightly with sweat when Finn lets himself in. He has a free coffee today. 

He should do what Rey says and just ask Poe out. It would just be one question, one easy one, but–

Poe grins at him and Finn forgets how to speak. 

He has a hot chocolate, today, for no particular reason, and Poe lets him have whipped cream and marshmallows on the top for no extra charge. “Free coffee, free extras,” Poe reasons. “But just for you.” He makes his hot chocolates with actual flakes of milk and dark chocolate, and Finn lets out a pleasurable sigh after he takes his first sip. Poe raises his eyebrows, amused. “That good?”

“So good,” says Finn. 

“Are you coming this weekend?” Poe asks. Finn frowns, unable to remember if anything is happening this weekend; the only dates in his head are deadlines. “It’s Pride. I mean, I don’t know if you’re LGBT, but I could at least use a hand with the flags.”

Finn didn’t realise it was Pride coming up; he’s starting to really put the  _ disaster  _ in disaster gay. He has an essay due the day after, so of course he says he’ll come and help Poe, and then spends the rest of the week fretting in the library and taking his coffee with extra shots. Poe, of course, is more than happy to supply. “Don’t work yourself too hard,” he says. 

Finn falls asleep one afternoon in the café, because it’s open, and when he wakes up, Poe has draped a blanket over him, one with little silver fish on it, and it smells like Poe - not of coffee, but of  _ Poe _ , slightly ashy with cigarette smoke and a little musky just with the smell of him. Finn does not want to think about what it means that he knows how Poe smells, so he folds up the blanket, says thank you to Poe for staying open late, and practically runs home. 

⋆

“Rey,” he says on the phone. “I need help and I need biscuits.” Dutifully, she arrives with ginger snaps and chocolate digestives and lies on a group of blankets on Finn’s floor as she helps him through the last stages of his essay, well into the night. He’s no good at these things – referencing, citations, footnotes or endnotes and hanging fucking indents, even just having a coherent conclusion – and she walks him through it all. With biscuits. Until three am. Finn doesn’t want to go anywhere tomorrow. He spreads out on the blanket.

“I wanna make signs,” he says. 

“For what?” Rey asks, the last digestive halfway to her mouth. Finn may explode if he eats another. 

“For Pride. It’s on Saturday and I told Poe I would help him decorate the café, so I thought I could make some signs to march with and then put them up. It’s not like I don’t have paint. Or cardboard.” He gestures to his pile of old Amazon boxes, which he honestly  _ did _ mean to recycle, but just hasn’t – yet. 

Rey cracks her knuckles. “Then let’s make some signs!” she enthuses, grabbing a box for herself and tearing parts off until it resembles something of a rectangle before Finn helpfully brings over the scissors, as well as his tub of paint tubes and mug of brushes (the best art storage solutions, he thinks, are the easiest ones). He gets pencils, too, and though he sketches everything out beforehand because he’s so prone to absolute disasters if he doesn’t, Rey just gets right in there, paint and all, staining her shirt as if it doesn’t matter, carving all of her mistakes out boldly. 

By the morning, Rey has made three signs and Finn has made two. His two say  _ no fear about being queer _ and  _ move, I’m gay! _ ; by the time they’re done, he’s too tired to do anything, and so instead sleeps for most of the day, ignoring the fact that he has lectures to attend and work to do. There’s time, he tells himself.  _ After _ Pride. 

He leans over the edge of his bed and asks Rey, “do you think he’ll like them?” 

Rey laughs and says, “of course he will.” 

⋆

When Finn arrives, signs tucked under his arm, the café is surprisingly busy; all of its regulars are there at once, laughing over coffee together and helping Poe with the last of the rainbow bunting. It’s the busiest Finn has ever seen it, and it’s nice to see it so  _ alive _ . Poe grins and hugs him when Finn comes in; he’s wearing a trans flag like a cape, tied neatly with a shoelace, and his new leather jacket is awash with various pride pins. It’s too big for him, probably secondhand, rolled up at the sleeves. Still looks good. Poe always looks good. 

“What’s this?” Poe asks, gesturing to the signs. Finn blushes, and lets Poe look at them, leafing through and grinning. “Oh, wow. Did you make all of these?” 

“My friend helped,” Finn says. “But she has an essay. She couldn’t come.” 

“These are amazing,” Poe says. “Can I have one?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Finn says; Poe opts for  _ move, I’m gay! _ , and makes Finn a coffee before they head off to join the march. He’s playing Diana Ross over the speakers, and Finn can’t help but tap his foot; Poe sings along lightly, and just as he puts the lid on Finn’s drink, the bell above the door (a recent installation, and one which Poe seems to be annoyed by more than he enjoys) rings and the snippy ginger library assistant steps in, looking a little flustered. Poe looks up, and laughs, setting Finn’s coffee aside to give the new arrival a hug that he clearly doesn’t want. 

“I can’t believe you came,” Poe says. “Guys, this is Hugs – uh,  _ Hux _ , or Armitage, and he actually got the degree I dropped out of at Tatooine. He is a baby gay, so be nice.” 

Finn notices that Hux is wearing what must be the world’s smallest asexual pride badge, but considering how stiff-upper-lip he looks, Finn supposes that it’s an achievement. Hux seems to recognise him, but nods his head slightly and so Finn assumes that their bad blood must be over. 

“Okay,” Poe says, waving to the group and ushering them all outside, “time to head!”

The Pride march is glorious, full of spectacularly coloured rainbows and glitter, and Poe buys an overpriced rainbow crayon so that he can draw rainbows on everybody. Halfway through the march, Hux runs into a friend of his, Phasma, whose height and build alone scare the living shit out of Finn, never mind the immense strength of her resting bitch face (he would  _ not _ want to fuck with her); but when she smiles, and when Hux smiles too, as if he’s not as unfamiliar with the concept as he pretends to be, Finn remembers that they too are human, just like Poe and Rose and Connix and Beaumont and Snap, who Finn meets for the first time and lends a sign. It’s a nice day, and warm in the sun, and Finn tries not to stare too hard at Poe’s arms emerging from his rolled-up shirtsleeves. Poe could literally be a model. It’s not even fair. 

Snap even brought cakes and snacks with him, so when the march is over they spread out on the grass and have a picnic. Finn has never felt so at home before since he started uni – yeah, he’s had Rey, and he loves his flatmates too, but there’s something about this that just makes him feel so unquestionably _ welcome _ . There’s no pang of worry in his mind that he doesn’t belong. Even grumpy Hux seems to fit in, unsure as he is around their friendly group. Everyone feels human when they’re eating a cupcake and spilling crumbs from between their fingers. 

“Hey,” Poe says to Finn as the group begins to disperse to go home or for drinks, “I’ve been trying out some new coffee and hot chocolate flavours, do you wanna try them out for me?”

And of course Finn says  _ yes _ , so before he knows what’s happening, he’s being ushered into Poe’s little flat, a top-floor affair too high for much of a view of anything but the sky. It’s fairly cluttered with things, but artfully so, aesthetic chaos. Poe almost trips over a cat on his way into the kitchen. 

“This is Beebee,” he says, scratching at the scruff of her neck. She’s ginger and fluffy and beautiful and lets out a little whirr at Finn, who falls immediately in love. “Yeah, she’s cuter than me; it’s awful. Upstaged my own cat.” 

Finn plays with her for a while as Poe makes him a new hot chocolate. “Hazelnut,” Poe says as he sets it down. “But I don’t want the hazelnut flavour to overwhelm the drink.” 

He pauses, tells Finn to wait, and then comes back, drizzling some chocolate flakes on the top before grinning a little bashfully. “Okay, that’s better. Now try it. You’re not allergic, right?”

“No,” says Finn. He loves chocolate and would live a disappointing life if he was allergic to nuts. He picks up the mug, a worn University of Tatooine insignia on the front, and takes a sip. He drops his head back, letting out a satisfied  _ mmm _ . “That is actually the best thing I have ever tasted in my life. I am not kidding.” 

“Well,” Poe says, his smile so bright it feels like it lights up the room, “guess that’s a yes for this, huh?”

“ _ Absolutely _ ,” Finn says. “Don’t take it away. I’m finishing it.”

Poe laughs softly, and then Finn realises how close they are, Poe resting on his haunches beside his couch and Finn leaning forwards to talk to him. Poe’s cheeks are flushed with his happiness, and from somewhere in the kitchen, Finn can hear a ska record bouncing. 

Poe lifts his hands to Finn’s cheeks, and asks “can I kiss you?”; instead of answering in words, Finn crosses the distance between them and kisses Poe, a little too hard at first, bumping their noses and earning a giggle from Poe, but then he manages to find his coordination and slows down a little, lips moving slowly against Poe’s. God, Finn feels like he’s just going to explode. Is it okay to feel like this? What if he really  _ does _ explode? 

To Finn’s great relief, he does not explode. 

Instead, Poe leans back and takes a sip of the hot chocolate for himself, making an appreciative noise. “Yeah,” he says. “It  _ is _ nice.” 

“Oh, you’re not gonna say  _ anything  _ about that, huh?” Finn asks, and Poe cracks up. “I see how it is. Was it that bad?”

“Start using some Chapstick and we can talk about it,” Poe says, leaning forward to kiss Finn again, light and chaste this time. “Okay, here is my official proclamation: I like you very much, Finn, and would like to get to kiss you on the regular.” 

“That sounds good,” Finn agrees, and Poe pecks him on the forehead before heading back through to the kitchen. Beebee follows him through, mewing relentlessly at him as Poe assures her that  _ no it is not dinner time yet Beebee and don’t you have some sleeping to do _ . “What’s next?” Finn calls. 

“You’ll find out,” Poe calls back. 

Finn does find out: it’s coffee flavoured with what Poe tells him is jasmine, and he takes a few long sips before admitting he’s not totally sure on the taste. “Yeah, me neither,” Poe says. “Let’s say this one is a no, then.”

“I mean – it’s not terrible–” Finn says, feeling bad, but Poe smiles and waves a hand. 

“Not everything works,” he says. 

Poe takes a long sip of the jasmine coffee, and hums. “I might have this at home,” he says eventually. 

“How did you meet that guy – Hux?” Finn blurts out, unable to stifle his curiosity. He just can’t think why Poe would know and be on friendly terms with the miserable library assistant. It’s plain strange. “I know you said you went to university together, but like –  _ how _ ?  _ Him _ ?”

Poe laughs. “Yeah, he’s a bit of a grumpy asshole. Stick up his ass, definitely. We were roommates when I was doing my degree – he’s a fucking great roommate, actually, unbelievably clean and he had such a big cutlery set that I was always stealing bits. He didn’t like that I came home late, but whatever. Anyway, we were alright but not that close until I told him I thought I was gonna have to drop out, and he tutored me all the way through to the end of the year. I would’ve dropped out way earlier if it wasn’t for him. He takes studying  _ so _ seriously. I didn’t see him after I dropped out for a few years until he came into the shop and we got talking again. I say talking. He kinda blurted out that he was having a crisis at me and he thinks I fixed it.” 

“A crisis?” Finn asks, finishing his hot chocolate. He drank that  _ way  _ too fast. 

“Oh, you know.  _ Poe, I think I’m gay _ .” 

“And it turned out he was?” 

“I would’ve eaten my own jacket if it turned out he wasn’t,” Poe says, taking both mugs back through to the kitchen. “Thank God I didn’t have to.” 

Finn tries a few more interesting coffee flavours, some of which work and some of which don’t, and then realises that it’s getting late and that it’s pizza night at his flat, so he should probably go. He excuses himself to Poe, who seems to recognise the unquestionable importance of pizza night, and gives Finn a warm hug before he leaves, burying his face in Finn’s shoulder.

“You’ll come in on Monday, right?” he asks. 

“Course I will,” says Finn. 

⋆

After pizza, and after Finn finishes catching up on TV from the week, he switches his lamp on and starts finishing off his most recent Poe comic. He wants to bring them into the shop and show them to Poe – the good ones, at least. Not all of them have turned out amazing, but Finn has been glad for the practice anyway: this has been one of his favourite illustration projects before, and it’s been nice to try out an art style for the comics. He starts putting them all together, too: lots of them have been waiting to be folded up and stapled for ages, and it’s satisfying to finally make them look official, professional. Finn beams down at his own work. 

He will sleep through most of Sunday, probably, and maybe only go out to get something to eat. But Monday – yeah, Monday is a day worth waking up for, worth going out for. Finn can’t wait to push open the door to the café and hear the jingling of the bell and see the smile on Poe’s face; he can’t wait to show him the comics, can’t wait to try some more new flavours, can’t wait to see Poe, can’t wait to kiss him again. 


End file.
